posted 08-25- 06:48 PM               

Werner

posted 08-25- 09:40 PM               

A disorganized plan on the german side.

Good pilots, and you fight harder when your defending your homeland, they knew if they took down that bomber they might save some lives back home.

posted 08-26- 09:30 AM               

And like Burkey said, strategic attacks on the British city(ies) took pressure off the airfields. This enabled the British to reduce their loss rate to a level below the German loss rate.

You could debate whether the Germans build the wrong proportion of aircraft types, ie too many Zerstoerer. However, I believe the wrong types, properly applied in sufficient numbers, could have crushed the British Air Defense.

However, had there been a German landing (without a German A-bomb), the US would have helped the Brits fend off the Germans at all costs.

posted 08-26- 02:35 PM               

Finding flat places to land wasn't that big of an issue, I mean assuming all FC bases had been hit as badly as Manston (which would have taken longer than the time alotted in the first place), Coastal Command and Bomber Command bases could have been used for spits and hurris. The big issue was the Command and Control structure - without it the RAF wouldn't have been half as effective in intercepting raids continuously from ingress to egress, but the only way to knock that out would be to cut the power to the radar grid (which was done a couple of times to the benefit of Erprobungsgruppe 210) and keep it cut off, and/or destroying the C&C bunkers of which there were a half dozen roughly. The only way to nail those would be direct hits, and the Luftwaffe's bomber force usually operated at or around 15-20k feet. From that altitude it would have been a lucky shot. They had units like Erp.Gr. 210 that were precision experts, but the Luftwaffe didn't even know the bunkers existed, and as demonstrated by one of the Biggin Hill raids (where the bunker was destroyed), within a day or two they were back at 100%, in an ordinary building in an ordinary village. As for knocking out the radar towers themselves, it was possible to do but they were remarkably resilient and there was a lot of redundancy along the south east coast.

I'm no expert on the subject, the above is pretty much a synopsis of the point that the author is making in the book I'm reading, and his argument is very compelling if you read the whole thing and can see the stats not only on planes, but on damage versus impact on operations. Commando's point was the nail in Sealion's coffin though - the Luftwaffe failed even to stall aircraft production while they themselves were having trouble increasing production. Remarkably, it was at the height of allied bombing in 1944 when Speer had finally gotten German industry on a war footing and production jumped dramatically. In 1940 however, the German government figured it could win the war while still producing plenty of consumer goods, instead of large amounts of munitions and armaments.

Ahem. That was the full answer I wanted to type to begin with.

Werner

posted 08-26- 04:08 PM               

Britain was never a serious threat to Hitler's real ambition which was to defeat Russia. Hitler wanted to contain Western Europe (the continent) before he invaded Russia so as to avoid a 2 front war. He went after Britain directly only after Goering convinced him it could be done easily. When it became obvious that the RAF could not be defeated easily Hitler turned his attention East, figuring he didn't have to worry about a two front war since there was no way Britain could invade German territory. To his thinking, by the time Britain and the US were strong enough to threaten "Fortress Europe" that Russia would be defeated and again Germany would only have to worry about a one front war. At that time he could seriously reconsider bringing England to her knees, but early in the war he didn't think she was enough of a threat to delay his Eastern Campaign. He knew that Russia was the real threat to Germany and the Russians proved him right. Bottom line...if Hitler had really wanted to defeat England at all cost he could have, but he had bigger fish to fry. This is to take nothing away from the accomplishments of the Battle of Britain. The Brits and their allies forced Hitler to reconsider his attacks on them and forced him to make some serious strategic mistakes which ultimately lead to Germany's defeat. But they really didn't defeat Germany in the Battle of Britain. They defeated a battle plan.

posted 08-26- 04:52 PM               

It seems Hitler did not have a clear idea of what it wanted to to with Great Britain. And the organization of his armies reflected that. The Wermarcht was designed to invade continental Europe and France was supposed to be the main threat. But attaining the superiority at sea was never a priority (the German navy was weak compared to the British and French fleets, despite a few big capital ships), and air superiority only existed over the battlefield (no true strategic bomber in the German arsenal, for example).

posted 08-26- 05:59 PM               

lilB - lucky indeed.

WM

posted 08-26- 08:47 PM               

1. Create a perfect world order run a "pure" "aryan" master race.

2. Liebens raum (i.e. exterminate everyone occupying fertile land that could be owned by member of the master race).

I am guessing Hitler that wanted to do to non-Germanic peoples what the Europeans did to Natives of North and South America. Crush and subjugate.

posted 08-27- 10:38 PM               

But, you guys have missed 2 technical issues that had a profound effect.

1) The luftwaffe was designed from the ground up as a TACTICAL air force (They had Junkers make the JU-88 capapble of dive bombing before they'd accept it for cryin out loud). It wasn't equipped for a strategic campaign. Bomb loads were too light, bomber armament was lacking, etc. The max range of German bombers made it easy for the UK to move aircraft production out of the target area.